Whether you’re a longtime iPhone user or have just gotten your first one, everyone can relate to wanting it to last as long as possible.
iPhones are built to last and run efficiently as long as possible, but users also need to take care of them as best they can. Aside from keeping it physically safe, there are numerous things you can do within your settings and apps to ensure your phone doesn’t get overloaded with storage and runs as smoothly as possible. We spoke with tech experts about five genius iPhone “hacks” that can help free space and optimize its performance. Read more about them below.
This Clean, Effective Powder Helps Support Muscle Growth, Endurance, And Recovery
3. Leaving Too Many Features On At Once
In order to save battery and keep your phone running as long as possible, it's wise to ensure you don't have too many features in full swing at once.
"Keeping their battery permanently stressed. By having high brightness, loads of push notifications, and heavy background activity like Bluetooth scanning and AirDrop on, you are stressing out your phone," says Steven Athwal with The Big Phone Store. "These activities are draining the battery and pushing the phone's processor harder, creating heat. The iPhone cannot perform effectively when it's hot, and its battery health has dropped, so these habits that are keeping it under persistent pressure are making it run slower over time. Reducing these features and keeping your brightness under control can help keep your phone moving fast."
2. Keep Track Of How Much Storage Your Apps Take Up
Sometimes, it can be really easy to lose track of which apps are taking up the most storage on your device, and some people forget that there's a way to find out.
"View the storage in settings by app, look for apps that are taking up too much space, and manage them," explains Tony Anscombe, Chief Security Evangelist at ESET. "For example, WhatsApp - change the auto-save pictures to the photo gallery, as you likely do not need all pictures stored that are sent to you, and set auto-deletion of messages to 7 days or a time limit that works for you."
3. Turn Off Background App Refresh
One of the settings that is known for slowing down phones, draining battery, and more, is Background App Refresh, and numerous tech experts suggest turning it off for optimization.
"Heavy apps like Facebook, TikTok, and Maps are always checking for updates in the background, keeping your CPU and memory active, even when your screen is off," notes Athwal. "Your phone is doing work you can't see, and it's slowing everything down. Turn this off, so your phone is only updating those apps as and when you need them, freeing up processing power."
2. Force Closing Apps
When you're using your phone, there's a feature where you can slide up and see every app that's 'open' on your device at the moment. Many people then choose to swipe up again to force quit the apps, believing it'll help with saving power or battery life, but Michael Routhier from Tech 4 Grown-Ups notes that it's actually not helpful.
"This is perhaps the most counterintuitive habit," he says. "Many iPhone users swipe up to close all their apps, thinking it improves performance, but iOS is specifically designed to manage background apps efficiently. When you force-close apps, your iPhone must completely reload them from scratch the next time you open them, which actually consumes more processing power and battery than leaving them in their suspended state."
5. Delete Large Attachments
In your settings, under the iPhone Storage page, there is a tool where you can 'Review Large Attachments' and clear up any excess files like pictures, GIFs, videos, and more that are still on your device without you realizing it.
"Every photo, video, and voice note is stored locally on your iMessage, which can fill up storage fast, especially for those with older models," adds Athwal. "When your storage is tight, performance drops. Delete the large attachments and instantly free up several GB."
